Wood

Wood is a kind of material for items that appears in NetHack.

Wooden objects are subject to burning and rotting; for wooden weapons, they can be burnt by dropping them in lava or using them to strike a monster with a fire-based passive attack ²⁄₃ of the time. Elven weapons and several pieces of elven armor are among the many items made of wood.

Wood golems are constructs made of wood, and are vulnerable to rotting - being hit by a rotting attack will cause them to fall to pieces, and a player in wood golem form will be reverted to their normal form, even if they have unchanging. Polypiling enough items made of wood will create a wood golem.

Gelatinous cubes will engulf and eat any wooden items they come across; polymorphing into a gelatinous cube will also allow you to eat wooden items.

List of wooden items

The following items are made of wood:

• Elven items
  • Elven daggers
    • Sting, an artifact elven dagger
  • Elven short swords
  • Elven broadswords
    • Orcrist, an artifact elven broadsword
  • Elven bows
  • Elven arrows
  • Elven spears
  • Elven shields
• Clubs
• Quarterstaves
  • The Staff of Aesculapius, an artifact quarterstaff
• Bows, including orcish bows and yumi
  • The Longbow of Diana, an artifact bow
• Crossbows
• Boomerangs
• Small shields
• Flutes and harps
• Chests and large boxes
• Wands with the randomized appearance of oak, balsa, ebony, maple, pine, or forked
• Rings with the "wooden" randomized appearance

Strategy

Wooden weapons (particularly elven ones) are favored by some players for their immunity to rusting, though they will need to take care when using such weapons against monsters with fiery passive attacks, such as fire elementals.

Polyself into a gelatinous cube allows you to eat wooden items, which in practice can be very occasionally useful for eating wooden rings to gain otherwise unobtainable intrinsics.

Origin

The use of wood in elven weapons and shields suggest that they may be made of (or at least inspired by) D&D's ironwood.

Variants

Some variants add new items made of wood, and variants that implement an object materials system also make it possible for certain items with hard base materials to be made of wood.

SLASH'EM

SLASH'EM adds the following wooden items:

• Baseball bat
  • Bat from Hell, an artifact baseball bat
• Dark elven bow
  • Plague, an artifact dark elven bow
• Dark elven arrow
• Dark elven short sword
• Skullcrusher, an artifact club
• Quick Blade, an artifact elven short sword
• Torch
• Wooden stake
  • The Stake of Van Helsing, an artifact wooden stake
• Defunct objects:
  • The Staff of Withering, an artifact quarterstaff
  • The Tentacle Staff, an artifact quarterstaff

dNetHack

In dNetHack, wooden weapons are of somewhat increased importance due to the inclusion of staves: a type of magical ward that is carved into wooden items, and can be learned from some spellbooks and wooden weapons. Staves are used by carving them into a wooden weapon with any weapon that uses the knife or dagger skills, then dropping that wooden weapon at your feet; some staves grant special effects when the weapon they are carved on is wielded. If you choose to re-carve a weapon that already has a stave, you will chip off the existing stave before carving the new one, damaging the carved weapon and adding a turn to the time required to carve the stave. Dwarves start the game with knowledge of all wards, and are always given a knife for carving and a club to carve into.

dNetHack also adds the following wooden items:

• Atlatl
• Elven items:
  • Elven mace
  • Elven sickle
  • Elven lance
• Macuahuitl
• The Rogue Gear-Spirits, an artifact crossbow
• Shadowlander's torch

Elven helms and elven boots are now made of wood instead of leather.

NetHack Fourk

In NetHack Fourk, the Big Stick, which is the new Caveman quest artifact, is made of wood.

xNetHack

In xNetHack, wood as a material has a −1 damage penalty for bladed weapons, and wooden armor offers one less AC point compared to their iron equivalents; however, wooden equipment is more than half the weight of their iron counterparts. Wooden helms are sufficiently hard enough to offer metal-like protection against falling objects.

xNetHack also uses the Big Stick from Fourk as the Caveman quest artifact, with the Sceptre of Might serving as the Priest quest artifact instead.

SlashTHEM

In addition to SLASH'EM changes, SlashTHEM adds the following wooden items:

• Mallet
  • Tenderizer, an artifact mallet
• Sharpened pencil
• The Staff of Withering, an artifact quarterstaff that was deferred in SLASH'EM